Coosa Creek Times, 5-19-2008
May 19th, 2008 | By Rick | Category: News & Comment
Fernando Meirelles’ Blindnes, a film I’ve been looking forward to, opened the Cannes film festival last week, and the reviews have been mixed. Dave McCoy of MSN movies doesn’t particularly care for it:
What could have been a creepy, intelligent horror/drama is essentially stripped of any humanity and humility because Meirelles chose to populate his meandering film with pretentious symbols instead of flesh-and-blood people (or, at least, fleshed-out characters). And what a cast to castrate.
Xan Brooks of the Guardian kind of likes it:
It’s a devastating bit of work - a cold-eyed portrait of social meltdown that nonetheless shows how catastrophe can bring out the best in people as well as the worst. I could have done without Danny Glover’s sage, hushed narration over every stray moment of quiet, but otherwise this was pretty much spot-on.
In other Cannes news, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opened yesterday, and Steven
Spielberg and company must be breathing easier — the first reviews are in and they’re not terrible. Not that it ever made a whole lot of difference what the critics said, but I suspect that even film royalty doesn’t like to be openly reviled.
They won’t be — “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is Good Enough,” writes Anne Thompson, while Jeffrey Wells tells us that
It gave me no real pain, and a healthy amount of serious moviegoing delight. (Although I was, from time time, slightly bothered.) Fears of a DaVinci Code-styled beat-down were, it turns out, unfounded.
Meanwhile, over in Israel, Yair Raveh blames you-know who for all the bad stuff:
The deal is such: everything good in Indy 4 is Spielberg, everything bad is Lucas. From the word go Spielberg does a whammy job at brisk filmmaking. But it was Lucas, who’s credited with writing the story (after he chucked out what was rumored to be a brilliant screenplay by Frank Darabont), that serves him with one bad idea after the other (David Koepp tied up all of Lucas’ ideas pretty neatly in a mostly snappy screenplay, although even he couldn’t figure out how to survive the third act, which all but ruins the entire Indiana Jones franchise and turns Indy into Fox Mulder).
Finally, Richard Corliss’ review in Time seems to capture the spirit of the movie. He writes:
. . . once it gets going, Crystal Skull delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment. Ford looks just fine, his chest skin tanned to a rich Corinthian leather; he’s still lithe on his feet, and can deliver a wisecrack as sharp as a whipcrack. Karen Allen, 56, who was Indy’s saucy love Marion Ravenwood in Raiders, still has that glittering smile and vestiges of her old elfin swagger.
Now, that’s what I like to hear.
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Around the blogosphere:
- There’s a three-day-old discussion of Prince Caspian still going strong over at Scanners.
- The Self-Styled Siren’s got a list of actors she calls “I Don’t Like Them, Sam I Am,” wherein she trashes Red Skelton. What is she … a communist or something?
- Luke, Evan and the gang are discussing Cloverfield, The Queen and the above-mentioned Narnia extravaganza over at MovieZeal.
- Be afraid. Be very afraid. Michael Moore is going to do a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11. Here’s an interview of Moore at Cannes by Variety’s Anne Thompson.
- Norma Desmond continues her not-so-quixotic quest to view and write about 100 movies in 100 days at The Flick Chick, and she always manages to say something fresh. The latest is on The Matrix.
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Finally, I want to give a shout-out to my friend Peet Gelderblom and his web-comic, Directorama. This week, Stan the Man goes shopping. Go see it!
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I’m with Raveh, although I have yet to see the film. From everything I read, Lucas seemed to be the stick in the mud, insisting on the aliens when Spielberg and Ford were reluctant. Given the man’s track record with the past three Star Wars movies, he is obviously a visionary who has little patience for details like acting and dialogue. Lucas needs to dream big and let everyone else sweat the small stuff.
And if Mr. I-Hate-Babies-And-Puppies Wells liked it, then I have no doubt it will easily register on my happy meter.
Yeah, that was my thought too … and Lucas doesn’t seem to listen to the critics, either. And he probably doesn’t have to. With ILM he’s got more money than God.